One of the bogus claims Brett Kimberlin has made against those of us who have engaged in truthful reporting about him is that our reporting is harassment. In fact, Kimberlin and his enablers are the ones who have been the harassers, and their lamest form of harassment has been their comments here at Hogewash!. This post about Anonymity and Cowardice ran eight years ago today.

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The use of the term “anonymous coward” to describe someone who posts a comment without using his real name or a known nom de cyber goes back to the early days of Usenet. If Samuel Clemens were to comment here as Mark Twain, he would not be considered an anonymous coward. (Note: Someone using a known nom de cyber (i.e., @BreitbartUnmask) may be a coward but doesn’t really meet the definition of anonymous coward.)

OTOH, these “commenters” are clearly anonymous cowards:The abusive, often obscene, content of the comments submitted under these names compounds the cowardice of the sender(s). He (they) doesn’t (don’t) have the courage to speak openly.

I’ve received around a hundred such “comments” over the past few months. I’ve posted a few of them. Most have been so juvenile that my reaction has been to shake my head and file them away. Some, however, have contained seriously perverted messages that raise concerns about the stability of the sender. They have caused my family to take some additional measures to assure our safety.

There are some really sick weirdo trolls on the Internet.

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For the most part, the Kimberlin-related websites such as Breitbart Unmasked never had a problem with abusive comment because the never generated enough traffic to attract commenters.